poems by other poets
scarborough
by Peter Challis
Playing ball, barefoot, above the bay on West Cliff
I take several steps back and wonder, what if –
What if I really smack it, leather it
Catch it unawares, I wonder whether it
Would take flight, catch a thermal, pass
High over the gorse, the marram grass
The winding path down to the crumpled sands
Over the deck-chair stripes, the child’s hands
Reaching for it, as it sails out to sea, and on
Nor’ nor’ east, and out, over the horizon
To be gone, headed maybe for far-off lands
Answering to the sea, and sun, and air’s demands.
Next day, a little boy finds a ball
On the beach – holds it, kicks, chases it all
Around the bay: at home, clutches it tight
Lest it should set sail again that night.
Madonna of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci
by Alison Quick
Blue
I sit. The silence of the gallery
collects around me, heavy in the air.
In front of me the iconography
I’d rather hasten past. I do not care
for martyred saints. But something stops me when
I see a Virgin Mary with her Child.
A shiver catches in my throat and then
I sense that sudden chill, blown from the wild
of Badakhshan: the mines of Sar-i-Sang.
Her robes are blue; the pigment ripped from rocks.
Before it graced her robes, explosions rang
deep in the earth and miners heaved the blocks
into the light: here now, for all to see,
that gouged-out blue of Lapis-Lazuli.
Hindsight
Forgive my trespass as, unobserved, I gaze on you.
Forgive my anger as I see what you cannot.
Forgive my grief that overpowers the joy which should renew
my faith in all humanity. This is the spot
where you should feel most free to take delight in motherhood:
that shaft of light reveals exquisite, tender love;
a mother’s arms encircle two small boys, as if she could
protect them from all ills. She does not see the rocks above
which here foreshadow harm, imprisonment and death;
she does not hear the echo of the cry “My God, My God,
why hast thou forsaken me?” She does not hear the final breath
before her son yields up the ghost. She has not trod
her future path; her love burns bright, an angel by her side;
but darkness threatens her; the rocks press in. There is no place to hide.